Every year students are anxious to get their schedules. Looking at your schedule and comparing them to your friends’ and seeing who is in your class and who the teachers are is an exciting moment. You may see something that you want or need to change. Students do not want to receive their schedule on the first day of class, they want them before they head back to school. “Getting your schedules before school started would be a lot easier,” sophomore Daniel Rudden said.

In the past students have gotten their schedule in homeroom. This process makes it a more difficult transition than the first day of school already is. Students rush to their guidance counselors desperate to switch out of classes or change teachers, which builds more stress for the students and counselors than there needs to be. This also makes it harder for teachers who have to help students catch up because they just moved into their class. “I had to switch out of two of my classes this year and learn the new material in my next class,” freshman Ryan Feldman said.

While all of these difficult transitions makes it more likely that students would receive their schedules ahead of time, this is not the case. Guidance does give the freshmen their schedules during orientation, still not releasing the rest of the students schedules because they are not usually finished right up until the first day of school. “We only decide to release freshman schedules’ to make everything run more fluidly,” guidance counselor Laura Cope said.

If everyone was given their schedule ahead of time, everybody would have the chance to switch classes. If the schedules were posted online, students would then just be able to email or call their guidance counselor if they wanted to switch a class. The past two years, the schedules have been released on portal.mcpsmd.org, but were taken down quickly. “I saw my schedule before school started online and it made it an easier transition by knowing my teachers and their room numbers,” junior Kiyaan Chavoshi said.

Getting schedules in the summer would also allow for teachers if they want to give summer homework to students. This would create an easier way for teachers to access their students before the school year or email them the supplies they need for their class. This would save a lot of time that they could use to teach instead of having to go over basic rules. Students getting their schedule before the first day would have a positive impact on everyone. The counselors would have more time to work on schedule changes. It would also give students the opportunity to switch classes and teachers if they were not comfortable with the class they may have been taking.

Jonnie Voyta

News Editor